Disease-defying spuds exiled from Europe – again

IT WILL not be a case of second time lucky. A second strain of potato that has been genetically modified to resist blight will probably not be grown in Europe.

Late potato blight destroys £3.5 billion of potatoes globally each year. In 2007, German chemical giant BASF developed Fortuna, the first GM potato to be resistant to the disease. But the company was forced to abandon the project in 2012 after failing to obtain approval to grow GM potatoes in Europe. It has since moved its entire plant science research arm to North Carolina.

Now British scientists have created potatoes carrying a gene, isolated from a South American potato, that makes them resistant to late blight. In field tests, the GM potatoes were unharmed when exposed to late blight and all the control plants were infected. The GM spuds also produced twice as many tubers. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, doi.org/rj7).

But Europe's strict rules on GM crops mean the spuds are unlikely to be grown there. "It's very dispiriting," says team leader Jonathan Jones of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK.

Instead, the technology behind the potatoes will be commercialised in the US by Simplot of Boise, Idaho.

The lobby group GeneWatch says the potato's £3.2 million cost was a waste of taxpayers' money, as most Europeans do not want GM food. But Jones says the cost is dwarfed by the £72 million that UK farmers pay on pesticides each year to control blight.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Resistant spuds exiled"

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